Koper

TIme to leave Venice, and to leave Italy! We had our usual breakfast downstairs then headed the 10 minutes walk back to the train station and grabbed our tickets eastwards to Trieste. As the train departed, I reflected a bit. I'm a little surprised it's taken me quite so long to visit Venice, and in the pantheon of "great destination cities" I'd say only New York and Tokyo now remain unvisited.

But it's such a mixed feeling to visit these days. Yes it's a beautiful city, probably the most unique in the world. It's just so overrun with people though, that it can be very difficult to enjoy. And I realise that I'm one of them, they all have the same rights as me etc etc, but it's difficult to see where Venice goes from here as it feels already like saturation point. The city for all its faults already feels like a theme park or the easter show, where everyone is a visitor. Every now and then you'll see residents and feel really sorry for them, trying to make their dentist appointment or whatever while shoving past a bunch of people trundling gigantic suitcases or mindlessly reading a map in the middle of a canal bridge. I've enjoyed it, I'm glad I've been, but I'm not sure I'll hurry back.

Onwards. The train sped along the northern shore of the Adriatic, eventually pulling into the city of Trieste after about 2 hours (around 1:30pm). This port city once belonged to neighbouring Slovenia before it was occupied by Fascist Italy in the 1930s, and ownership issues were only really solved again in the 1970s which seems comically recent.

Our ultimate destination for the day was the seaside town of Koper just across the border, but of course Trieste is the end of the line! In most of the Balkans and former Yugoslav countries, there just aren't many trains to speak of, so our public transport options will get harder from here. In the end we just got a taxi across the border since it was only 20 kilometers, though 45 euros was a pretty steep price to pay.

The driver dropped us at our car rental place where we picked up our latest car, a Volkswagen Golf with most of the trimmings, nice. Rather than explore the city though, we headed for a supermarket for supplies, then headed to our accommodation out of town to settle in for the afternoon/evening.

It's a single-bedroom apartment in a small low-rise building, near the freeway so there's a bit of road noise but newly renovated so it's bright and welcoming. We're here for five nights and should be quite comfortable! Good to have some cheap prices again finally, for the first time really since we left Spain. We bought enough food for four dinners, four breakfasts, some snacks, alcohol and toiletries for about 18 euro ($25 AUD).

Settled in at "home" and did some work, disturbed only by a big thunderstorm which blew through and dumped a bunch of rain. Daytrip to Croatia tomorrow!Read more